As global cybersecurity threats continue to rise, and ransomware attacks increase in frequency and intensity, the need for data protection in enterprises has become more urgent. According to the 2024 Global Enterprise Data Management Survey by Synology, organisations often struggle to achieve comprehensive data backup due to factors such as budget constraints, lack of manpower and time, and overly complex existing solutions. This results in less than half of respondents feeling prepared to deal with ransomware.
"After collaborating with clients of different sizes and industries, we found that organisations are indeed limited by many real-world factors in the process of protecting data, making it difficult to cover all operational aspects comprehensively," said Liu Jiayu, Deputy General Manager of Synology's Backup Products. "This means that organisations may still be exposed to cybersecurity risks, which is an area that Synology has long been focusing on and eager to provide strong assistance."
As a leading global data management company, Synology has introduced a new data protection solution: ActiveProtect, an all-in-one machine designed specifically for enterprise backup. It comes with a dedicated operating system and features mechanisms such as backup, deduplication, encrypted replication, and instant recovery. By addressing three major challenges practically, ActiveProtect offers data protection services that cater to diverse deployment needs and scales.
No need to piece together hardware and software, pre-configured for optimal performance
Liu Jiayu observed that most existing solutions in the market require IT personnel to piece together hardware and software, leading to concerns about not being able to ensure functionality and performance that meet the organisation's needs. For example, if a company chooses backup software that requires immutable backups and deduplication to reduce storage space, they often have to integrate different cloud solutions from various vendors, requiring thorough research on software specifications and extensive communication with multiple suppliers.
In contrast to the uncertainties of self-assembly, ActiveProtect undergoes rigorous testing internally by Synology and provides a pre-configured data protection solution. According to Li Wencong, Senior Manager of Synology's Backup Products, the high integration of hardware and software enables optimal storage space allocation, system efficiency improvements such as data reordering and image-level data processing, and built-in features like data deduplication and immutable encryption, enhancing processing performance while significantly reducing the effort required by IT personnel in advance.
Single interface monitoring and operating the entire architecture, significantly reducing management resources
The next challenge is to help IT personnel deploy a complete data protection architecture in the least amount of time. ActiveProtect eliminates the need for cumbersome deployment steps, allowing data backup to be completed within 15 minutes from initial setup. This rapid deployment is made possible because ActiveProtect is an all-in-one machine that can distribute all workloads in the organisation, enabling IT personnel to manage backup policies highly customised based on data attributes and importance.
Liu Jiayu explained that data such as financial systems, customer information, and executive computer data are equally important for the smooth operation of a company. With consistent backup frequencies and offsite replication principles, these cross-platform data can be protected. If a source of the same priority level is added in the future, the same backup policy can be easily selected to accelerate data protection settings.
Considering that enterprises have numerous data sources and backup servers, another advantage of ActiveProtect in simplifying the data protection process is providing a single management entry point for centralised monitoring and management of all backup architectures. IT personnel can view local, offsite, and cloud backup data, as well as directly operate tasks such as restoring data replicated to the cloud to branch office sites, without switching between different platforms, enjoying a smoother and simpler data protection process.
Using multiple deduplication mechanisms combined with data tiering to address storage cost burdens
Facing rapid data growth and increased audit requirements, enterprises need to retain more data for the long term. Liu Jiayu pointed out that storage costs are indeed a significant burden, forcing IT personnel to prioritise protecting higher-level data, leaving protection gaps and potential cybersecurity risks. "To help organisations maximise the range of data that can be protected, the R&D team has designed many features to enhance storage scalability," explained Li Wencong, citing multi-level data deduplication technology as one mechanism of ActiveProtect.
He used the example of backing up employee computers to illustrate that ActiveProtect first compares data on the source side, i.e., the computer, with similar data on the backup server, transmitting only changes or different files, potentially saving up to 99% of transmission traffic. After entering the backup server, global deduplication is performed across platforms, such as data from virtual servers, retaining only truly different data. When multiple backup servers need to be replicated to offsite locations, cross-site deduplication can further optimise storage space usage and transmission bandwidth, saving over 50% of storage space on average.
Moreover, enterprises can define rules for data tiering, moving data stored for a specified number of days from expensive servers to backup storage destinations with high scalability and lower unit storage costs. In the future, data can be retrieved at any time from a single management interface, further reducing storage costs. By combining these two technologies, an organisation can create the most cost-effective data protection architecture.
In conclusion, ActiveProtect is a new generation data protection solution that is entirely customer-centric. It promises to bring a streamlined management and outstanding performance experience to enterprises, addressing the challenges of self-assembly, difficult management, and high storage costs. In the face of increasingly severe malicious attacks, it helps organisations confidently address various cybersecurity risks and significantly enhance operational resilience.
Learn more about the new data protection experience brought by ActiveProtect
